In Kingston upon Hull, where the Humber flows wide, Dockside lamps used to flicker above cobblestones slick with salt, Trawler men gathered—silhouettes against the glow, Hearts steeled for the Arctic’s hungry halt. With masts iced in frost they cast off at dawn, Hands numb but practiced, eyes fixed on the horizon’s line, With prayers on their lips for fair seas and full nets, They sailed where the polar winds intertwined....

Love At First Sight: They called it love at first sight, though neither of them believed in such things—until that bright April morning in 1981. On her porch swing, reading a well-worn paperback, Sarah watched the stranger get out of his dusty rental car. He looked lost, curious—eyes tracing the white picket fences and awnings of Maplewood’s Main Street. He paused, caught her gaze, and offered a shy wave. By lunchtime, th...

Chapter Eight: Blood Remembers October 1973 — Two Weeks After the Arras Incident Military Quarantine Zone, France The debriefing lasted seven hours. She told them everything: the descent, the chamber, the breathing earth, the thing that spoke in her father’s voice. They asked about her crew. She gave them names. They wanted remains. There were none. Just mud. Piles of it. Some of it still warm when the emergency team arri...

Chapter Seven: Her Father’s Ghost Northern France – September 1973 Forest near Arras, Site 17B – Classified British Coordinates Eleanor Mercer zipped up the tent flap and checked her watch. Day One: 06:15. Fog heavy. Humidity high. EMF baseline: unstable. They’d set up camp three miles from the original trench site, using copies of WWII-era maps and sanitized military archives—what little remained after the war department...

Chapter Six: One Man Left to Scream France, October 1944 — Two Days After Contact Loss with Mercer’s Squad The order came down simple: “Find Mercer. Recover survivors. Avoid direct engagement.” Sergeant Rupert Kendall didn’t like simple orders. Especially not ones that smelled like silence. No follow-up. No backup. No map corrections. Just coordinates, and a whisper from the adjutant: “Radio cuts out in that sector. Be ca...

Chapter Four: The Sound Beneath the Static France, October 1944 – Forest near Arras Corporal John Mercer hadn’t slept in twenty-three hours. He didn’t tell the others that, but they could see it. His eyes were cracked and red. His fingernails were dark with dirt and blood—he’d scraped at the edge of the collapsed trench until his hands bled. He kept telling himself it was to recover Rooker. But part of him knew it wasn’t....

Interlude: Letter from a Survivor March 1931 – Wiltshire, England From: Private Edwin Dawley (ret.) To: Mr. John Mercer Dear John, I am writing to you in what I am told is one of my lucid moments (they think I am a madman, but it isn’t so) because your uncle will not. He’s a proud man, and what we saw in France took something from him none of us could give back. You asked him once what happened to Edward Hale. You won’t g...

Chapter Two: That Which Watches France, November 1917 — Three Days After the Collapse They said the trench had gone quiet. Not in the way you wanted—not like peace. The guns still barked in the distance. Shells still fell. But in their little stretch of hell—Sector C8, a kink in the front line no one wanted to hold—the birds had stopped flying. The wind had stopped blowing. And no one spoke above a whisper anymore. Privat...

Chapter One: The First Door France, November 1917 The rain hadn’t stopped in three days. Private Edward Hale stood in knee-deep sludge, his coat sodden and stiff with cold, watching the waterline inch higher against the trench wall. The wood was beginning to rot. Everything stank of iron and rot—old blood, wet canvas, and something beneath that… something sweet, like spoiled meat left too long under the floorboards. He ex...

France, 1917 The mud in the trench was always there, thick, clinging, and alive in a way that made Private Edward Hale uneasy. It sucked at his boots, pulled at his ankles like it wanted him down with the others who’d never made it back to the surface. He kept to himself mostly. The other lads in his unit thought he was soft, too poetic for war. He wrote no letters to anyone and stared into the mist longer than a sane man...